Cespedes is DHing because it’s a day game after a night game and his left hamstring still isn’t 100 percent (partly because he keeps hitting doubles) and also because Craig Gentry is such a strong defensive player there’s no reason to push it with Cespedes when Gentry is available.

If you missed it this morning, in today’s Chronicle I broke down the A’s record with Sonny Gray, Scott Kazmir and Jesse Chavez on the mound (very good) vs. Dan Straily and Milone (bad). Oakland is likely to pursue a back-end starter at some point, and here’s how the A’s might do that.

Fernando Abad has been the A’s top reliever – he hasn’t allowed a run in 12 outings now, and he had big strikeouts of David Ortiz and Grady Sizemore last night. Could he see time in the ninth inning? Possibly, – but he’s so valuable as a lefty specialist that I believe the A’s will mostly hold him in reserve for exactly situations such as last night. Would you want to skip Abad there, in the fifth inning of what was then a one-run game, because you were saving him to close? Probably not. I’ve still got to believe Jim Johnson is back as the main option to close out games. Abad is nasty, no doubt, but he could do potentially more important work exactly where he is than in the ninth inning.